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Two months into the surgical program at Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital and it seems like the world might actually be ending. Or there's at least going to be some kind of Zombie epidemic. Every single bed in the hospital seems to be taken up by men, women, and children all with an awful strain of the flu that's hit the Pacific Northwest like a tidal wave. Typically it's the very young and the old who require hospitalization for the flu, but this time there's no discrimination in who the flu chooses.
The hospital is short staffed as it is with the illness, Scott was forcibly taken home by his mother when he developed a fever and his congestion didn't couple well with his asthma.
"Aww, his mommy had to take him home." Jackson sneers from behind the surgical mask he's wearing as he and Stiles stand in the ER. All around them the noises of people hacking and sneezing sound. Stiles hasn't gotten any sleep in 30 hours, the last thing he ate was a Snickers about 10 hours ago. His shift doesn't end for another 18 hours with all the overtime they're putting in.
So yeah, you could say he's having a pretty bad day. Bad enough that hearing anything about his best friend come out of Jackson's mouth has him seeing red.
"Listen to me," Stiles says, ripping his face mask and gown from his body. "My best friend is actually pretty sick, and if I didn't have to be here taking care of half the damn town with you, I would be with him because that's what best friend's do. So if you say another word about him, prepare to see billboards with your face and the fact that you had syphilis up all over Beacon Hills. And before you start telling me that's slander, it not. It's liable because it would be in print. Large print all over town. And then everyone would know you're a slutty dude who contracted an STD that was only relevant when pirates still existed. I will end any chance you have at potentially contracting another STD ever again. Okay?"
Jackson looks over Stiles' shoulder at where Lydia's standing with Parrish. They both have twin looks of wide-eyed surprise on their faces. This is probably the first they've seen of wildly protective Stiles. He really only gets like this when his dad or Scott are involved.
"Hi." Jackson says, waving. "Did you not just hear him? He threatened me!"
Parrish levels Jackson with a cool stare. "You're not exactly giving him a reason not to at this point."
Lydia nods. "Jackson, you can't just badmouth people and then expect anyone else to stand up for you. You're not making any allies here with your piss-poor attitude."
Jackson rolls his eyes. "Whatever. I'm getting a soda."
He trots off, leaving Stiles with his attending and his resident. "Threaten him again and I'll have you brought to the chief." Lydia says coolly, pulling her mask back up as a man and a woman walk into the ER. Well, they aren't really walking; the woman is mostly holding her husband up with all of her might.
"Oh, that's not good." Parrish says, slipping on gloves and looking around. "Stiles, make sure we have a bed clear. If we've got patients who can walk on their own and have equal breath sounds, I want them discharged. Spread the word."
Stiles nods, heading to the nurses station to let them know just as there's a crashing sound and a woman yells. "I need a bed. I don't care where it comes from." Stiles tells a nurse before running over to where Parrish and Lydia are knelt over the prone form of the man just brought in.
It turns out to be an aortic dissection. The man's bleeding internally, and with every breath he takes, it only gets worse. Parrish leaves Lydia in charge of the ER while he rushes the man to surgery. "When we get in there, there's not going to be any time for questions, Stilinski." Parrish tells him, stripping off his gloves and the gown over his scrubs. He's standing over the hospital bed the man's in like he's ready to run a race.
And that's practically what they end up doing. The elevator doors open and suddenly Parrish and Stiles are pushing the hospital bed out onto the floor and into the operating room that's still being set up. They have to cut the man's clothes off of him and then run to scrub in while the anesthesiologist puts the man under.
"This is going to be quick and messy. If we don't get the bleeding under control, this man will die in a matter of minutes." Parrish says, scrubbing violently at his forearms with the soap. Stiles feels a bit like he's going to throw up. Kind of like when he used to be a kid and went on that roller coaster with all the loops over and over again for his 10th birthday.
The hours that follow leave Stiles feeling like he's just come out the other side of a marathon. Once the man's chest is closed and he's sent out to post-op, Stiles emerges from the operating room on legs that feel shaky and coltish. It is literally the best feeling in the world to know that you've saved someone’s life, that your hands carefully cut and sewed another person back together. Without Stiles (and Parrish, who did most of the work to be honest) the father of two who came in would be dead.
But he's not. Because Stiles is a hardcore surgeon with energy to spare and he doesn't need sleep. Or food. Or a social life.
Parrish pats him on the shoulder on his way out the door to inform the man's family that he's made it through surgery. Usually Stiles kind of lives for seeing the reactions that the family has when they get news like this. There's nothing quite like the hug you get from an overwhelming and grateful spouse.
Instead of going out and basking in the warmth of giving the family news, he sinks to the floor of the scrub room and presses his back to the wall, closing his eyes.
-----
He wakes to the sound of his pager going off from somewhere beyond him and a foot gently kicking his leg.
"I'm up!" Stiles yells, opening his eyes and looking around wildly. Big mistake. He needs to eat and soon. His head starts spinning from the movement and he has to close his eyes for a moment.
"You okay?" A voice calls from somewhere.
Stiles cracks an eyelid, looking up at the man now washing his hands in the sink as the scrub nurses work on cleaning up the operating room beyond the wall.
"Yeah fine." Stiles mumbles, rubbing his eyes. He replays the words again and realizes who spoke them. Stiles jumps to his feet, facing the amused face of the Chief of Surgery. "Chief! I can explain! Or I would, but I need to answer this page. I have extremely important lifesaving to do!"
He scoops his pager off the floor where he left it and goes in search of Lydia, who has just paged him from post op. Stiles runs up three flights of stairs, trying to get over the mortification of sleeping through a surgery happening in the other room, only to have his boss wake him up.
Lydia's waiting at the nurses' station with a chart in her hands when Stiles finally reaches her. "There you are. I thought you'd quit. Or died. Or quit and then died from the shame of having to quit." Lydia rambles. She does that when she's had too much coffee. It's pretty much the only time she's unflappable. "Where have you been?"
"Oh me." Stiles says, shrugging. "I was checking up on my patients. And then I had labs to run."
Lydia pins him with a look, one eyebrow raised. She points with the pen in her hand at the bulletin board behind where there are fliers for activities and seminars in the hospital, and now a very charming photo of one Dr. Stiles Stilinski passed out on the floor of the scrub room.
"Oh for the love of--" Stiles moans, marching over to the bulletin board to pull it down.
"Don't you dare." Lydia commands. "That's the best motivation we've had all day. And I think it'll keep you from taking any ill advised naps in the future."
"I didn't." Stiles argues, feeling his heart beating rather shallowly and quickly when he presses his hand to his neck. "I just closed my eyes for a second."
"Yeah." Lydia says, rolling her eyes. "Just long enough for the Chief to find you. How do you think this reflects on me as a physician?"
Stiles tunes most of her rant out, following Lydia as she marches through the hallways, remarking on how she didn't raise him to be a disappointment. His stomach rumbles as they pass a vending machine, but Stiles doesn't want to risk Lydia's wrath for showing the weakness of needing food instead of feeding off of the lives of others like she does.
-----
How has it come to this, that his life is nothing but people vomiting on him and cleaning up said vomit? This must be karma for the Jackson thing.
Jackson wouldn’t have the ability to manufacture a virulent strain of the flu just to mess with Stiles, would he? Surly not. The dude’s going into plastics.
Danny could though. And for whatever reason that completely baffles Stiles, Danny is actually friends with the Evil Spawn (also known as Jackson). Maybe Jackson knows something about Danny that he’s using as blackmail. Could Danny be in the witness protection program? Is he hiding from the mob and Jackson knows?
Probably not.
But still.
Stiles goes back to getting all of the sick out of his hair under the faucet of the locker room.
-----
All it takes is one orderly carrying an armload of sterile dressings, a snot-nosed toddler, and one Stiles totally not paying attention for everything in his life to go completely wrong.
This is how it happens. Stiles is returning to the ER after being scolded by Lydia, but with all of the patients they keep getting, some of the overflow spills out into the hall.
The previously mentioned orderly rounds the corner, boxes stacked higher than he can see. Stiles sidesteps in a way that would have probably worked if he hadn’t been dehydrated, starving, and sleep-deprived. It’s a narrow gap between the kid, her parents, and the orderly. Either way, he ends up putting one foot down in a puddle of some unknown fluid on the ground and before he knows what’s happening, he’s flying.
-----
If there’s anything worse than waking up after having knocked yourself out against the floor, it’s waking up nose to nose with the dude who you take your clothes off with in on-call rooms. And not to change into other clothes. Never just to change. The other kind of activity that involves taking off your clothes.
It’s waking up nose to nose with Derek Hale holding a flashlight up to your eyes to check for pupil response. It’s feeling your scrubs sticking to your legs and praying that it’s vomit and not pee that you slipped in.
“Stiles.” Derek says, pulling the flashlight away. “You hit your head.”
“Oh, so now you’re telling me obvious stuff.” Stiles says, his words slurring. His dad always used to tell him that he was a combative sick person. He starts to sit up in the bed he’s found himself in.
Derek pushes his shoulders back down to the bed, looking more amused than anything. “You knocked yourself out.”
“Was it vomit or pee?” Stiles asks.
Derek looks over his shoulder at where the rest of the ER is operating as business as usual. He schools his features, ever the professional. “It was vomit.”
“That’s good.” Stiles answers. He feels like his head is a huge pounding mess.
“Is it?” Derek asks, pressing fingers to Stiles’ pulse point and looking down at his watch.
“Aren’t there children you could be saving from burning buildings?” Stiles asks, his voice coming out louder than it should. He very well might be concussed.
Okay, now Derek gives him the unamused look Stiles is used to seeing. “No, the only child that needs taking care of is you at this point.”
“Ha ha ha.” Stiles grumbles, looking over Derek’s shoulder. Last time he saw the ER it had been bustling with activity. Now it’s far calmer. Some of the nurses are actually sitting down.
“You called for a neuro consult.” Danny says, approaching with his hands in the pockets of his lab coat.
“You did not!” Stiles yells. His dad hadn’t been lying about the combative patient thing.
“Ocular response is normal.” Derek tells Danny, ignoring Stiles completely. Danny smirks and takes the chart that Derek offers him. “Pulse is normal. Blood pressure is low. No laceration to the scalp.”
Danny nods, taking his own flashlight and shining it into Stiles’ eyes. Stiles tries to bat his hands away. “Don’t make us get the big nurses to hold you down, Stilinski.” Danny says, giving him a pointed look. Stiles instantly calms a bit. The last thing he needs is photos of that along with him sleeping on the floor of the scrub room circulating.
“I’m fine.” Stiles grumbles.
“Yeah,” Danny says. “Funny that you and the guy who had a nail in his head said the same thing. Let us do our damn jobs. I’d like to see him get a CT.”
Derek nods. He looks over his shoulder. “Lahey!”
And of course, Isaac appears a moment later. There isn’t even a little vomit on him. Lucky bastard. Stupid genius model.
“Take Dr. Stilinski to get a CT. Page me when you get an image.” Danny says, taking down something on his chart. He wrinkles his nose. “And get him out of those clothes. He smells like a distillery.”
Stiles wrinkles his nose in turn and takes a good smell. He looks down at his pant leg.
“It’s rubbing alcohol!” Stiles exclaims. “You told me it was vomit. You’re a monster.”
Derek turns away after shrugging. That just leaves Stiles with Danny and Dr. Model.
“Get him out of here before I have to call security.” Danny says. “And put in an IV with fluids.”
Isaac asserts that he’ll do just that. He helps Stiles out of the bed and into a wheelchair that he produces out of nowhere.
-----
It’s humiliating. Totally and completely humiliating to need Isaac to wheel him through the hospital like he’s a patient and not a doctor. He tries to keep his mouth shut about it, but he fails as usual.
He suspects he might have a mild concussion. This is confirmed when Danny comes back to look at his scan.
“You need to be monitored for the next 12 hours.” Danny says as Isaac puts an IV into his arm.
“I’m not staying here.” Stiles says, “This place is infected with the plague. Look, leave the IV in, I’m a doctor, I can handle taking it out once the fluids are done. I’ll just go home and wallow in peace.”
“Yeah,” Danny says, “I’m not discharging you without someone here to get you home.”
Stiles opens his mouth to argue. He’s an adult. Isaac may have seen that he sometimes wears Bat-Man underwear, but he’s still an adult. It’s Bat-Man and not Bat-Boy after all.
“I’ll take him to Melissa McCall’s.” Says a voice out of nowhere. Stiles looks up from his place in the wheelchair. Derek’s standing in the doorway in the kind of dumb giant sweaters that only fisherman from old novels wear.
“I’ll call a cab.” Stiles says, wheeling himself away from them all. He’ll just make a break for it, roll on down to the police station and stay there with his dad. It’s only a mile or so down the road.
“You’re worse than the kids I treat. And they’re the ones with life-threatening illnesses.” Derek says, taking hold of the wheelchair’s handles and pulling him back through sheer force. Stiles gives up pushing the wheels after about two seconds out of fear there could be some horrific accident where his fingers get caught in the spokes and end his career as a surgeon before it’s even really begun.
“Dinner, fluids, rest.” Danny tells Stiles, walking with them to the door. Derek takes Stiles’ elbow and helps him to his feet once they get there. “I’m serious. It’s not worth it to run yourself ragged during your internship. It’s a race and not a sprint, Stilinski.”
Derek thanks Danny at the door and asks him if they’re still on for their jog tomorrow. Once he’s established their meeting time at a freakishly early time the next morning, Derek takes off towards the street.
“Are you driving me to Melissa’s?” Stiles asks, struggling to hold his own IV bag up in the air. Derek sighs and takes the IV bag from him, holding it up with ease. Stiles is kind of forced to stay close because of it.
“I don’t think she needs to deal with you right now.” Derek says, holding open the door to a building across the street. Inside there’s a small lobby and a set of elevators.
“You live across the street from the hospital.” Stiles says, remembering that’s what Derek had told him that weird night they fell asleep in the on call room spooning and fully dressed as opposed to their usual sweaty and naked.
Derek looks over at him once he’s pressed the button to the elevator. “You can’t be this dense Stiles. I’m taking you to my apartment.” Stiles opens and closes his mouth in confusion, to which Derek cuts in with, “Look, if you’re not comfortable, I can drop you off at home. But there’s no one there to watch you. Or I could call you dad.”
Stiles shakes his head. “No. That’s okay.” He looks around the elevator awkwardly. “Unless you turn out to have lamps made from human skin. In which case I’m just going to gently remind you that my dad is the sheriff and I’ve been taking self defense lessons since I was 10.”
Stiles looks over at Derek to see that the other man’s eyes are wide and there’s kind of a pinched expression on his face. Derek’s probably rethinking the whole nursing Stiles (or at least making sure he doesn’t choke on his own vomit and die) back to health thing.
“I don’t think you’re a serial killer.” Stiles clarifies awkwardly. “Though statically speaking, doctors as a profession do have a higher number of serial killers than most occupations. But if you were going to kill anyone, it shouldn’t be someone that you know.” Stiles promptly closes his mouth.
Which lasts about 2 seconds.
“I just mean that you don’t have to do this.” Stiles explains as the doors open and Derek leads them down a hall to the end. “Because you take care of people for a living. I bet the last thing you want to do right now is monitor an intern for brain damage. You probably just want to hang out,” Stiles follows Derek inside, waiting by the door as Derek flicks the lights on, “In your spartan apartment with little to keep you occupied besides the ridiculously tiny television above your elliptical. How do you even watch that from the couch?”
“I don’t watch much TV.” Derek answers. And if there was any indicator that he was an axe murderer, it was that statement. “I’m usually at work. When I’m not, I’d prefer to be outside or reading.” Derek turns back to Stiles. “You’re freaked out by my apartment. I’ll take you home.”
Stiles bats away Derek’s hands when he tries to hustle him out the door.
“Shut up.” Stiles says, taking the IV bag so that Derek can close the door behind them. “This is fascinating. I mean, when I think about it, it makes perfect sense that your place would be just as brooding and scary as you are on the outside. But seriously.”
Derek makes a soft huffing sound and glares at him.
“I’m kidding.” Stiles says, waving a hand. “You just do it to balance out how sweet you are to the kids. Because you think we would walk all over you if you smiled and joked all the time. And we probably would, so that’s a good judgment call on your part.”
Derek scoffs from around a corner. Stiles follows the sound to the kitchen, where there are new looking stainless steel appliances and a breakfast bar with two stools in lieu of any dining room table.
“I wouldn’t have to glare at you all if you would just do what I ask of you the first time.” Derek says, arranging cheese and crackers on a plate. He sets it out in front of Stiles. “Take that slow or you’ll make yourself sick.”
“Sure thing, Dr. Hale.” Stiles says, shoving a cracker and a cube of cheddar into his mouth.
Derek gives him the side-eye from where he’s getting down a frying pan.
“What?” Stiles asks, his mouth full of food. “Is that a thing for you? Like a turn-on thing? The Dr. Hale thing? Should I do the thing?”
Derek snorts. “It’s a thing now, for sure. But I would wait on that for a while at least.”
Stiles smiles, considering this. Considering Derek and his empty apartment and that Stiles calling him Dr. Hale might turn him on. It’s shaping up to be an interesting evening. Derek disappears again and reemerges with a coat rack that he sets next to Stiles and hangs his IV bag onto so he doesn’t have to hold it up anymore.
“Now, I have an important question for you.” Derek asks, “How do you like your eggs?” He holds up a carton of eggs at Stiles and raises his eyebrows.
Jesus. Derek really does have a whole other side when he’s not at work. He’s all eyebrow raising and making cheese plates for injured interns.
“Fried. Runny yoke is vital.” Stiles answers. He watches as Derek cracks four eggs into the pan and they begin sizzling away over the burner.
“Me too.” Derek says, pulling a loaf of wheat bread out of nowhere and going to the toaster.
Derek Hale is making Stiles breakfast at 6 in the morning.
Stiles has a bit of an internal freak out while Derek cooks. What does this mean? Sure, Derek is the guy the he sleeps with. But they’ve never even so much as gotten coffee together. The only things he knows about Derek is that he likes runny yokes, his middle name is Harrison, he special orders the organic cotton scrub caps that have mountains on them, he plays games with his patients, he tucks his shirts into his scrub pants like an old man, and he doesn’t watch TV in his spare time.
But the key that Derek gave him is still in his locker. Stiles steadfastly refused to put it on his key ring, and only use it in case of emergency where all of his clothing had been completely destroyed.
Derek’s the one who told him he didn’t have to wait in that horrifying line with all the people who were worried they might have syphilis. Derek brought him coffee and a shirt that night he didn’t have any clean laundry. He found Stiles in the supply closet two weeks into his internship having a panic attack after his first code blue, when he lost his first patient. Derek’s the one who talked him down from that moment when he through the world was actually ending.
And now Derek’s making him eggs and toast because Stiles is exhausted, hungry, and dehydrated. Because he slipped and fell trying to do a cool spin move instead of just stepping out of the way and waiting for the orderly to pass.
A plate of eggs and toast slides into his field of vision.
“Butter or Jelly?” Derek asks, standing at the fridge and looking back at him. Holy crap he’s handsome. Even after a 48 hour shift.
“Butter, obviously.” Stiles answers.
Derek frowns, grabbing the jelly for himself before he settles down next to Stiles and gets to eating.
One more thing Stiles knows about Derek. He’s a freak of nature who dips his toast with jelly in his yokes.
“That’s disgusting.” Stiles comments once his brain has fully processed what he’s seen.
“It’s good!” Derek says through a mouthful of toast with jelly and eggs.
Stiles shakes his head and goes back to his own food. Once they’ve finished, Derek tells him he can have the bed. Any of Derek’s clothes are up for grabs.
Stiles nods, reaching to unhook the empty iv bag from the coat rack. He reaches to pull of the tape holding the needle in his arm. “I’ll get that.” Derek says, coming from out of nowhere with surgical gloves on.
“Why do you even have gloves here?” Stiles asks. “You live here. You don’t do surgery here.”
Derek raises an eyebrow at him. “You can't open the book of my life and jump in the middle.” He draws the needle carefully out of his arm and disposes of it while Stiles puts on a Band-Aid.
Derek watches Firefly. One more thing to know about him.
Stiles feels a lot better once he gets upstairs and takes off his scrubs. He’ll feel like a human again once he has his own clothes to change into. Unlike the rest of Derek’s apartment, his bedroom is actually pretty cozy. The walls are painted a cool gray and the bedding is dark blue. The bedroom is at the top of a set of spiral stairs with a big window looking out on the hospital. There’s a railing on the other side where Stiles can see the rest of the apartment spread out before him.
He pulls on a pair of Derek’s sweatpants and that dumb Harvard Baseball t-shirt that he always wears. Derek’s footsteps sound coming up the spiral stairs.
“I’m just gonna get my pillow and I’ll sleep on the couch.” Derek says, walking towards the neatly made, and frankly huge bed.
“Shut up.” Stiles says, flopping down on the other side of the bed with his phone in his hand. “This is your place, and your bed. We can share. We’ve slept in a twin at the hospital together enough times.”
Derek fixes him with a peculiar look. “Okay, if you’re sure.”
He picks out a shirt and excuses himself to the bathroom connected to the bedroom. Stiles lounges on the bed, looking over at the practical wall of bookshelves on the other side of the room. It’s mostly books, but there are also some knickknacks he’ll have to investigate when he’s not so tired.
Derek emerges from the bathroom wearing a t-shirt and black boxer briefs. He walks to the window and pulls blackout curtains across, blocking out the sun. There’s still some light coming in through the side where the railing is, but Derek fixes that by pulling a second set of long black curtains mounted on a rod in the ceiling across the long space.
“Oh my god. You’re a genius.” Stiles says, basking in the suddenly dark room. He’s always struggled with sleeping through the day because the window near his bed lets in too much light. Like this it could be nighttime instead of morning.
“I invested in them during my internship.” Derek explains in the darkness. He must really be used to it, because he finds the bed with ease and slides in next to Stiles. “How do you feel?”
“Tired, kind of like an idiot.” Stiles responds, and not just because of the falling thing.
“You’ll feel better when you wake up.” Derek reassures him, finding his hand in the dark and taking his pulse. Maybe it’s out of habit at this point. But it does weird and unexplainable things to Stiles’ insides.
“Yeah.” Stiles answers, pulling the covers up over his shoulders.
They have more room than ever. More room than the on-call room has ever afforded them. And yet there’s Derek’s arm, wrapping around Stiles’ waist and pulling him closer. It’s not a forceful move, not at all. Stiles could tense and Derek would pull away from him. He’s done it before and Derek’s always respected him.
“Night.” Derek says, his breath deepening against Stiles’ back.
Stiles hums noncommittally back.
The thing he somehow always forgets is that after the panic attack that started whatever this is between Derek and himself, and before the sex; there was a kiss.
It didn’t even happen in the midst of the panic attack or moments later. It happened hours later that night, in an elevator around three in the morning.
It was Stiles. Stiles who was dead on his feet, who looked at Derek leaning against the wall while he went through his little notebook of patients, walked over and kissed him. It wasn’t even a kiss with tongue. It was close-mouthed and quick. It was gratitude for whatever had happened earlier. And in his crazy brain, Stiles had just decided to do it.
Derek’s the one who pulled him back in by an arm when Stiles arrived on his floor and went to wordlessly leave the elevator. He’s the one who held Stiles’ face between his hands and kissed him so hard and so good that his knees buckled.
And in that moment, Stiles knew there was something else in the world that felt just as good as being in the operating room.
It was Derek.